


To Be Asked

by cassandraoftroy



Series: Defying Expectations [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Gender Roles, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-09
Updated: 2013-11-09
Packaged: 2017-12-31 22:50:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1037317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassandraoftroy/pseuds/cassandraoftroy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony is beginning to get comfortable in his new relationship with Steve, but after the Avengers' latest battle, he's sent reeling again when circumstances force him to confront the prospect of their future and an expectation that he had been hoping never to face: children.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Be Asked

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks and love to my betas, cygna_hime and mechanosapience.

Most people, as Tony understood it, experienced a gradual transition into wakefulness, wandering through a half-stage of semi-consciousness before becoming fully aware. For him, it was more like flipping a switch; his mind went from dreamland straight into firing on all cylinders, taking in and processing data before he'd even opened his eyes.

He was stretched out on a firm but yielding surface, and could feel the warm weight of a blanket around his shoulders. A lot of people might take it for granted that they'd fallen asleep in a bed the night before, but for Tony, there were at least even odds he'd nodded off in his workshop, slumped over a project with his head on his folded arms.

It wasn't _his_ bed, though; that much was immediately apparent from the dazzling light trying to stab its way through his eyelids to prey on his tender vitreous humor. He had blackout shades on the windows in his own bedroom to keep the sun from intruding on his beauty sleep.

That left only one logical place that he could be, and a breath through his nose with his face against the pillow confirmed it: Steve's room. The scent of an alpha, threaded with an undertone that was utterly unique to Steve, was simultaneously comforting and arousing. _I could definitely get used to waking up like this._

The novelty of sharing a bed with Steve Rogers hadn't entirely worn off yet; the other man had been serious about taking their "courtship" slowly – enough that by the third month, Tony had started watching those security recordings again to reassure himself that Steve really did want him – and in the five weeks since they'd started sleeping together, global crises had interrupted their domestic bliss no fewer than three times. _I think we're owed some "us" time._ He stretched and opened his eyes, turning over to face his alpha's side of the bed.

Steve was sitting with his pillow propped against the headboard, reading a book. Tony peered at the title: _Omega Drive: The 20th Century Struggle for Dynamic Equality._ He smirked up at Steve. "Doing a little light reading?"

Marking his page but not closing the book, Steve grinned down at him. "I'm still catching up on what I missed in the ice," he admitted, "SHIELD briefed me on the important points, but it's nice to see what omegas have been able to achieve over the last seventy years."

Lifting himself on hands and knees, Tony snaked across Steve's body, snatching the book from his fingers and tossing it onto the nightstand by the bed. "Right now, I'm more interested in showing you what one _particular_ omega can do," he purred.

"I think I've got a pretty good idea of that already," Steve replied, his grin widening into a hungrier display of teeth as he lifted Tony to straddle his hips, "but don't let me interrupt your demonstration." His warm, callused fingers trailed over Tony's sides to rest on his hips, thumbs caressing the hipbones.

Tony shifted, and felt those hands tighten around him just slightly, a possessive reflex that sent a thrill up his spine. He slid his hands up the planes of firm muscle that made up Steve's abdomen and chest until he could curl his hands behind his alpha's powerful neck and twine his fingers through the short blond hair at the back of his head. He leaned close to the other man's face, offering his mouth, which Steve claimed with a kiss that was still slow and tender enough to surprise him, no matter how many times he experienced it. The sheer power of emotion that Steve could put into the ministrations of his lips and tongue left Tony more breathless and needy than he would ever admit outside the walls of Steve's bedroom, or his own. When he felt those strong, warm hands come up to embrace him, Tony almost surrendered all of his seductive intentions to give himself over completely to the gentle affection of his alpha. Almost.

He broke the kiss and knelt upright, grinding against Steve's stiffening cock, which was still covered by his boxer-briefs. With a suggestive twist to his lips, Tony began to wriggle backward toward the foot of the bed, dropping to all fours when he'd given himself enough room. Keeping his eyes locked on Steve's, he leaned down to catch the elastic waistband of Steve's underwear in his teeth, and guided it down the other man's body. Steve's cock sprang free as soon as the elastic had cleared it, accompanied by a soft growl from his throat. Steve lifted his hips so Tony could pull the underwear down his legs, still not using his hands. Once he'd dragged them far enough that Steve could kick them off on his own, he crawled back up Steve's body until he found himself face to face – _or to be technical, face-to-cock_ – with his alpha's erection.

At first, he did nothing more than nuzzle his face against Steve's cock, deeply inhaling the tantalizing, slightly musky alpha-scent, rubbing his cheek against the velvety-soft foreskin, and letting the fine blond hair tickle his nose. Then he tasted Steve, drawing back the foreskin with one hand and flicking his tongue across the slit of his cock. The corner of his mouth turned upward as he felt Steve's hand bury itself in his hair, clenching just enough to get a firm grip on Tony's head. Closing his eyes, Tony relaxed the muscles of his throat as much as he could, and took Steve's cock into his mouth.

His jaw had to stretch slightly to accommodate the girth, and even Tony's trained gag reflex put up a bit of a struggle as the head of the cock swept past his soft palate and against the back of Tony's throat. He vocalized as he exhaled, letting the vibrations of the moan carry up into his mouth, where Steve could feel them. The fist tangled in his hair tightened slightly in response. Tony pulled back just a little and closed his eyes, concentrating as he worked at Steve's cock with his tongue.

"Careful," Steve rasped, pulling Tony's head gently away from his erection, "I'm getting close, and we don't want to waste it."

Teasingly, Tony flicked his tongue across the tip of his alpha's cock. "Wouldn't be the end of the world; you couldn't boil a three-minute egg in your refractory period. But, have it your way." He inched his way slowly up Steve's torso, dipping low so that the cock he'd been servicing now dragged along his stomach, starting just below the arc reactor. The hand gripping his hair guided him closer until he was within reach of Steve's hungry kiss. Now straddling his hips, Tony let his knees drift further apart until Steve's cock, still glistening from the attentions of Tony's mouth, brushed against his ass. His performance had left him wet enough that Steve didn't need to reach for the tube of lubricant they kept in the nightstand.

He felt strong hands bracket his hips again as he was maneuvered into position, and then Steve's cock pressed gently but insistently against his entrance, until it relaxed enough to admit him. Tony's own hands scrabbled at the smooth, firm chest beneath him, callused fingertips and blunt nails scoring only the lightest of red marks on the pale, muscular flesh; in seconds, those marks had healed away completely. Tony's body made a much better canvas than Steve's. As he felt Steve's cock slowly plunge deeper inside him, he tipped his head to one side, exposing his neck in a gesture that begged for a mark. Steve obliged him, pulling him down against him and closing his mouth on Tony's throat. Those recruiting-poster-perfect teeth nipped the tender skin just hard enough to leave lingering indentations, before being replaced by the more gentle caress of Steve's tongue. And all the while, Tony felt himself taking more and more of Steve's thick, warm cock.

Steve raised his lips to Tony's ear. "Do you want my knot?"

"Always," Tony gasped, pressing himself harder onto his alpha's erection – until his brain kicked in. "...But I promised Pepper I'd meet her for lunch before the Board of Directors meeting at two. What time is it?"

There was a pause while, Tony assumed, Steve twisted to glance at the alarm clock. "A little after eleven. Probably not a good idea, then." He was right, unfortunately; while Steve's knots didn't last any longer than other alphas', they didn't recede any more quickly, either. Tony would miss the Board meeting, never mind lunch with Pepper. "Next time, then," Tony promised breathlessly.

"I'll hold you to that," Steve rumbled, digging his fingers into Tony's buttocks hard enough – Tony hoped – to bruise. With that firmer grip, he lifted Tony up a little, so that when Steve thrust into him, his cock no longer buried inside him to the hilt. Tony could feel the knot swelling at the base of his alpha's erection, just outside the ring of muscle he clenched around Steve's cock. He missed the fullness, the stretching, the profound intimacy that came with taking Steve's knot, and had to fight the temptation to slam himself down onto it, responsibilities be damned.

Even with the shallower thrusting, Tony felt the pressure beginning to build inside him, and he withdrew one hand from Steve's chest to stroke his own arousal. The tension in Steve's limbs showed that he was close as well; with his teeth gritted and the tendons standing out on his neck, Steve was the perfect image of power and strength on the cusp of losing control. Tony drank in the sight of him, letting the image fuel his own building orgasm. He wasn't sure, but Tony thought he came first, and the spasms of muscle clenching around him pushed Steve over the edge after him with a roar. Warmth flooded his body as super-soldier semen poured into him, and Tony – always running on at least three mental tracks at once – took a moment to recall with belated relief that he was another ten days away from needing his next suppressant injection.

When the last wave of orgasm had passed over them both, Steve pulled Tony down against his chest and wrapped his arms lightly around him. "Even without the knot, we don't need to move right away. You've got time before your lunch meeting, don't you?"

Tony's cell phone bleeped from the pocket of the jeans he'd discarded on the floor the night before. "Absolutely," he confirmed, steadfastly ignoring the insistent electronic noise. "If it's important, they'll call back." He stretched out, twining his legs with Steve's, and basked in the body heat generated by serum-enhanced physiology.

Less than thirty seconds must have passed before Steve's cell phone rattled across the nightstand, propelled by its own vibration accompanied by the sound of an old-fashioned telephone ringer. "Shit," Tony spat. "Both of us that close together –"

"Means trouble," Steve agreed reluctantly, reaching for the phone. Tony eased himself off of Steve and headed for the bathroom to clean up while Captain America got the details of the latest crisis.

* * *

Responding to an emergency-in-progress meant getting your mission briefing on the fly – quite literally in Tony's case, as JARVIS split-screened the suit's HUD to display the satellite images being fed to him while he rocketed southward over Manhattan; Steve's voice came through clearly over the comm from the Quinjet, where he was leading the briefing. At the edge of the armor's peripheral vision, Tony could see Thor soaring through the sky in the same direction, the power of Mjolnir allowing him to outstrip even the Iron Man suit's repulsor-powered flight. Incongruously, Bruce was clinging to the Asgardian's back as though Thor were some kind of bearded thoroughbred. Within the armor, Tony gave a slight smirk; however ridiculous they looked, at least it would get the Avengers' two heaviest hitters on the ground first. Based on Steve's information, those two were the only ones likely to make a dent in the opposition anyway.

The rampage at Fort Dix had started less than an hour ago. Tony spared a moment's thought to marvel at Ross's stupidity for keeping his pet monster so close to major population centers, rather than shipping him off to Antarctica immediately after the Harlem incident. "The Abomination": Coulson had only told him a few details that the CNN broadcast hadn't covered – who Blonsky was, his connection with Ross, and his imprisonment after the Hulk took him down. One of the things Coulson had neglected to mention was that he was being held in _New Jersey_.

He glanced at the bottom of his visual display, where the live satellite feed showed the trail of destruction left in the Abomination's wake. It formed an almost perfectly straight line running north-northeast, heedless of watercourses or major highways, toward Manhattan. That unerring fix on a single destination, and the timing – Bruce had just returned to New York a couple of weeks ago from one of his season-long walkabouts – made Tony wonder how "accidental" the Abomination's escape really was. But blame could wait until after the crisis had passed. _If an unstoppable force of destruction leaves New Hanover Township heading northeast at seventy miles an hour, and the Avengers leave Manhattan half an hour later, give or take... looks like Staten Island is going to be today's lucky winner._ "Iron Man here," he said, cutting into Cap's monologue, "recommend asking SHIELD to instruct the NYPD to place a road-block at the west-bound side of the Verrezano-Narrows, and prevent passenger boarding of the Staten Island Ferry in Manhattan." There wasn't time for any sort of evacuation, but they could at least prevent any more civilians from unknowingly putting themselves in the line of fire.

"Done," Natasha replied a moment later. Then Cap resumed his tactical briefing. The plan was simple enough: Hulk and Thor were the only ones with any hope of engaging the Abomination directly, so they would conduct the ground assault. Iron Man and Hawkeye would act as spotters and try to keep the radius of devastation as small as possible. Cap and the Widow would have little chance against Blonsky despite their physical augmentations, so the alphas would coordinate the attack remotely and manage civilian rescue and evacuation. Tony tried not to think about that one German general's famous words about what happened to battle plans upon contact with the enemy.

Movement in the streets below caught Tony's eye, pulling his attention away from Cap's instructions. With a word to JARVIS, the satellite feed vanished from the bottom of his display as the images from the suit's faceplate camera expanded to fill his visual field. Tony dropped lower, at the same time zooming the image in for a clearer look. A trail of crushed asphalt stretched out behind the Abomination as the enormous figure loped onward, heading inexorably northeast. "I have visual contact," he called over the comm, "and can I just say, holy shit."

"We're moving in to create a perimeter," Cap confirmed. "Try to keep him inside it."

Tony didn't bother dignifying that remark with an answer. He glanced over at Thor and Bruce, ready to point out their target, but Bruce's gesture at the ground told Tony that his friend had already spotted Blonsky. He'd watched the Hulk pull off some pretty impressive transformations over the year or so they'd been fighting side by side, but this made Tony stare. Bruce leapt from Thor's back and plummeted toward the city streets below, his arms and legs outstretched like a skydiver. He had timed both the jump and his transformation just right, as Tony's faceplate camera showed: the Hulk landed on Blonksy's upper back with the force of a meteorite impact. Literally – the crater they made was deep enough to conceal both monsters from street level, if anyone had been on the streets to observe them. Thankfully, the roar of the Abomination's approach seemed to have driven any bystanders indoors and out of the immediate line of fire.

Two creatures that size should not have been able to move that fast. They lunged, leaped, and tackled each other at a speed that the suit's HUD was hard-pressed to track. One moment they were wrestling in the street, and the next Blonsky had pulled away, galloping on all fours to put distance between himself and the Hulk. There was open construction in a lot nearby, and the Abomination loped toward it, launching himself at the steel skeleton of the high-rise in order to gain the high ground.

The Hulk lost no time following him, barreling through the fence that cordoned off the construction site. He picked up one of the sundered poles that had anchored the fence into place and began looking for his opponent – but before he could do much more than glance around the packed-earth lot, the Abomination hurtled down at him from one of the upper levels of the partially-completed building, wielding a steel I-beam like a baseball bat. The Hulk reared back and hurled the aluminum fence pole at him; it flew end-over-end toward the rapidly descending monster and struck him full in the face – and bent like a soda straw. The Abomination landed almost on top of him, and the retaliatory swing from the I-beam sent the Hulk reeling backward into a pallet of lead pipe. As the Hulk pushed himself to his feet, one fist wrapped around the length of heavy industrial chain that held the pipes in place, tearing it away from the pallet.

Tony watched Thor descend, looking for an opening that would allow him to attack the Abomination without getting in his teammate's way. Overhead, the Quinjet swept past to make a vertical landing on a nearby rooftop. It disgorged its passengers: Hawkeye took up a lookout position on the corner of the roof, while Natasha unclipped something from her belt and fastened it to the railing that ringed that portion of the rooftop. It held a line that enabled her and Steve to descend to street level quickly, where he saw them duck down an alley that connected to the next street over, and begin corralling civilians out of the area.

Captain America and the Black Widow spread out and began organizing onlookers quickly, their recognizable Avenger costumes and authoritative alpha tones easily commanding compliance from the frightened Staten Islanders. But there were only two of them, and the boundaries of this fight shifted with no notice at all. A dark red minivan, its driver undoubtedly trying to speed _away_ from the danger, came the wrong way down a one-way side street and pulled out onto the road torn up by the recent passage of the two monsters.

Redirecting his repulsors to take him toward the imperiled vehicle, Tony glanced back at the combatants. The Hulk charged his foe, tackling him through another section of the construction lot's wall and landing hard on the Abomination's back, just to one side of the spine ridge. He smashed the Abomination's face into the asphalt a few times, and then wrapped the chain still held in one fist around his throat. The Abomination reared upright, digging his fingers beneath the thick links of steel, and bellowed, "NOT THIS TIME!" He arched back and snapped forward again, tossing the Hulk off his back and over his head to land hard in front of him, cracking the pavement for several yards around them. The Abomination tore the heavy chain away from his neck and flung it at the Hulk at alarming speed; Tony could hear the whistle of its passage through his helmet speakers.

Hulk was just picking himself up off the street as the chain came spinning through the air at him, and it only narrowly missed him as he hurled himself to one side. Tony's head snapped back to the minivan and he realized, too late to reach it, that the vehicle was directly in the chain's path.

The driver saw it coming and attempted a high-speed U-turn, but there wasn't time. The flying chain caught the minivan broad-side, shearing through steel and fiberglass in a scream of rending metal and shattering windows. The van was severed clear in half – and with the front end now freed of the ballast of the other portion of the vehicle, it shot off wildly down the side street from which it had come. The remaining half of the minivan listed forward where it was, bereft of the power of motion. Tony's heart lurched when he saw the rear-facing child seat still fastened securely onto the minivan's second-row bench.

_Come on, Big Guy, keep him busy for a few more seconds,_ Tony silently begged as he dove for the wrecked minivan. He had JARVIS zoom in on the image: the child-seat itself looked fairly intact, if a bit scraped and scratched, so the kid – if there was one in the seat – might be okay. _If I get him out of there NOW._ A few frantic heartbeats later, he landed in front of the automobile shell. The panicked small-child wailing coming from the seat affirmed that it was indeed occupied, and Tony fumbled for a moment to get the damned thing unfastened.

He twisted to look over his shoulder, and saw that the fight had tumbled closer. Thor was in the mix now, which improved their eventual odds but made things all the more chaotic. Turning back to his task, he struggled with the straps holding the car seat in place; his armored gauntlets weren't making the job any easier. _This kid's gonna graduate high school before I get this thing off,_ he snarled to himself. Finally he just tore the belt free entirely and turned the child seat around. The child was probably a little younger than two, with a mop of dark curls, dark skin, and a very healthy set of lungs. The buckle holding the kid in the seat was much simpler, and Tony had him out and the two of them in the air before the toddler could take another breath to start screaming again.

"Hang on tight, kid. Can you do that for me?" He cradled the boy with one arm, needing the other hand to stabilize his flight. Whether the child understood him or was simply terrified, little hands clung desperately to his armor. Tony shot straight up until he felt they were safely clear of the fight, and then began an arc toward the perimeter the two alphas were setting up. "Hawkeye, take over for me a minute; I've got a rug-rat to rescue."

"Copy that, Iron Man," came Barton's reply over the comm. "Do what you need to do; I've got this covered."

The kid was still screaming his head off. _Guess I can't really blame him for that,_ Tony thought as he dialed back the audio pickup in his helmet to 50 percent. "Hey, little guy," he cajoled, trying to calm the kid down, "it's gonna be all right. Okay?" He tried to modulate his voice so that, even through the suit's speakers, he would sound reassuring. It must have worked, because the child looked up at him. "Do you know who I am?"

The boy nodded. "I'rn Man."

_Looks like the Marketing Department has been doing its job._ "That's right! Did you ever want to fly like Iron Man?"

That got a vigorous nod. Tony grinned behind his faceplate. "Is Iron Man your favorite superhero?"

This time the kid shook his head. "War M'sheen."

Tony snorted. _I had that one coming._ "War Machine is a good choice too. He's a friend of mine; maybe you can meet him sometime. Would you like that?"

"Yeah!" The child's face lit up, his recent trauma momentarily forgotten.

Now Tony angled his flight down toward the police barricade up ahead, half a dozen streets back from where he'd left the combatants. He landed gently, so as not to jar the toddler he carried, and immediately headed for a knot of EMTs who could look the boy over and take care of the cuts and scratches he'd sustained from the broken glass. "You remember what I said, okay?" he told the boy as he handed him off to the emergency responders. The child's enthusiastic affirmative rang in his ears as he turned and shot back into the air to resume his position.

By the time Tony found the brawl again, it had drifted into a shopping plaza. Thor and the Hulk were tag-teaming the Abomination using what he quickly realized were rather creative tactics. It made sense: a creature with the raw physical power that the Hulk or the Abomination possessed could make good on the promise Archimedes offered when he demonstrated the lever – "Give me a place to stand, and I shall move the earth." So his teammates were depriving the Abomination of that place to stand. As he watched, the monstrosity that Blonsky had become tumbled unsteadily out of the sky toward Thor, who took hold of Mjolnir and leapt up toward him. With a hearty two-handed swing, he struck the falling Abomination in the lower back, reversing his trajectory and throwing him back into the air.

Then it was the Hulk's turn. He wrenched a strip mall sign out of its concrete mooring and jumped onto the low roof of the long line of stores. As the Abomination came within reach, Hulk brought the sign up to meet him. A shower of plastic fragments and broken fluorescent bulbs rained down on the rooftop as he swatted the Abomination skyward again.

Tony held his position, hovering at enough distance from this bizarre exchange that he could keep an eye on the situation without getting caught in the crossfire. Thor was running across the shopping center parking lot, tracking the Abomination's path to stay underneath him as he fell back toward earth. But he froze as a terrified scream pierced the air; both he and Tony turned to find the source of the alarm.

Two women stood at the mouth of the side street down which the severed front end of the minivan had careened. One of them, with tight ringlets of dark hair flowing loose about her shoulders, seemed to be frozen in place with one hand half-raised to her open mouth, the other hand pointing at the monsters at the other end of the street. Her partner cast a desperate look at the ruined carcass of the minivan before grabbing her hand and pulling her back around the corner before she could scream again.

When Tony dragged his own attention back to the fight, what he saw startled a curse out of him. They were about to lose their best chance of wearing down and subduing the Abomination without massive amounts of property damage and risk of civilian casualties. The distraction of the woman's terror had made Thor hesitate for too long; for all the superhuman might of the people of Asgard, super-speed was not among their gifts, and there was no way Thor could get into position before Blonsky reached the ground. _But I can._

Angling into a shallow dive, Tony flung himself toward the pavement at full speed. Just before he made contact with the ground he rolled onto his back, wincing at the high-pitched grinding wail as the back panel of his armor was savaged by asphalt and gravel. He looked up to see the Abomination plunging toward him, only seconds away from landing on his face. Tony raised his arms and legs, ramped up the power settings on his palm, boot, and chest repulsors into the redline, and unleashed a simultaneous blast at maximum thrust. The force shoved him back into the pavement, cracking the asphalt in a spiderweb pattern around him as he sank about three inches into the ground. But it did the job: the repulsor burst caught the Abomination about twenty feet from impact, arresting and reversing his descent to propel him airborne once again.

After a painfully disoriented moment, Tony slowly raised his head to look for his teammates; his HUD showed him that the Hulk was already moving to "catch" Blonsky again. He took stock of himself, and came to the conclusion that nearly every single part of him hurt. Firing all his repulsors at 125 percent power against the unyielding pavement had felt like getting punched by a bullet train, and the baseball-slide he'd taken to get in position had practically rattled the teeth out of his head as the suit had scraped off half its paint job. _Looks like the Jolly Green Giant and Fabio have the situation under control. For once, I'm more than happy to leave them to it._ He climbed slowly out of the shallow crater he'd made, stretched his arms and legs to make sure that everything still worked, and launched himself off the street to resume his observation post in the air.

* * *

"Tony!" The familiar voice from behind him echoed faintly off the metal bulkheads of the Helicarrier corridor. Fury had brought them in to debrief after the fight – a move he may have ended up regretting, since the Avengers were the ones asking most of the pointed questions this time around, mostly about who the hell had decided it was anything like a good idea to let the Abomination be confined so close to a major population center. Tony turned to face Bruce, who had changed during the debriefing into the spare set of street clothes that SHIELD kept on board for him. "Can we talk?" Bruce asked.

It was almost one o'clock, but Tony estimated that he'd be able to make his lunch date with Pepper if he wore the armor instead of waiting for Happy. She wouldn't be _thrilled_ when he showed up in a power suit instead of a business suit, but it was better than being late. "Of course. What's on your mind?"

Bruce caught up with him and they continued toward the flight deck together. "Okay, well. Stark Industries used to work on the Hulkbuster program for the Army, right?"

Tony froze mid-stride. _Oh. Shit. Right. The conversation that I was hoping to put off until roughly never._ He took a deep breath, trying to mask the ensuing wince as his side twinged sharply – the all-over ache from the fight had receded during the debriefing, concentrating itself in a couple of ribs that felt at least bruised, and a wrenched shoulder. "Listen, Bruce, I'm sorry about all that – really, hugely, unimaginably sorry. I had no idea of the real story, what was going on with Ross, until after Harlem. I swear, if I'd known, I never would have–"

"No, Tony, that's not what this is about at all!" Bruce rested a hand on his left shoulder – the injured one, though Bruce had no way of knowing that. Tony stifled a yelp. _Okay, that might actually be the rotator cuff. I should get that looked at._

Tony turned and slung his right arm around Bruce's neck in a gesture of camaraderie that coincidentally took his injured shoulder out of range of his friend's heavy-handed reassurances. "Then where is this going? Because I wouldn't have figured that the special weapons program used by the strike force that hunted you for months across two continents would be your favorite topic of casual conversation."

Bruce broke eye contact, dropping his gaze to the deck plating. "I want you to start up the program again."

_"What?!"_ He turned to face Bruce fully, gripping both his friend's shoulders and ignoring the stab of pain when he raised his left arm. "What brought this on, all of a sudden? I thought things had been better since New York. You didn't have any incidents on your last field trip, and when you do change, you've got more control. Where's this coming from?"

Bruce's head came up again as surprise and alarm passed across his features. "That's – no, you're right, things have been better. I'm explaining this badly. I didn't mean for the Other Guy." There was a brief pause, and his voice was tense when he started again. "I meant for Blonsky."

Tony let his hands drop from Bruce's shoulders and gave a one-sided shrug that favored his injured rotator cuff. "Hopefully we won't have to worry about him for a while. While you were resolving your post-combat deshabille, the rest of us impressed upon Fury the importance of making sure he was put somewhere _secure_ this time."

Frowning, Bruce considered this. "It's not enough. He got out of a fully-manned Army base. I'm not sure there _is_ a place that's completely escape-proof for him, unless he was kept permanently sedated… and even then, all it would take is one person on the inside to interrupt the drug schedule. I need to be sure that no matter where I am, or what I'm doing, or what happens to me, there will be a way for the rest of you to take Blonsky down so he can't hurt anyone. That's why I want you to open up the Hulkbuster program again – and I want to help you with it."

He felt one eyebrow cock upward in skepticism. "Did you pick up a mechanical engineering degree while I was in there yelling at Fury?"

"I don't mean for design. I mean… Testing."

Tony stared at him for a moment, letting the implications of what Bruce was suggesting sink in. "Wait. Hold on. Back this crazy train up a minute. Tell me what's really going on."

"I did!" Bruce protested, indignation raising the pitch of his voice a few steps. "There needs to be a way to deal with Blonsky if Thor and I aren't available. There are too many lives at stake to leave it to chance."

"Don't bullshit me, Bruce; I _invented_ bullshit. Nobody just volunteers to transform into a rage monster and get shot with missiles all day out of some abstract humanitarian impulse – not even you. So what's the deal?"

Bruce slumped a little, realizing he'd been made. "Can we do this somewhere else? Someplace a little more private?"

"Sure," Tony agreed blithely, "I know just the place."

There was a small Officers' Mess just a couple of junctions away – more of a break room than a full-service mess hall, with a handful of little square tables, a wall of vending machines, and a coffee service setup at the back of the room. It was nearly empty this soon after the completion of an operation, with only a single pair of uniformed agents sitting at a table and conversing over their mugs. "Okay kids, Avengers on deck. We need the room," he announced. This, coming from a still-armored Iron Man missing only his faceplate, startled the two lieutenants out of their seats, one of them still holding her coffee cup; Tony shooed them toward the door. As they crossed the room, Tony's glance flitted around the small space and came to rest on the closed-circuit camera in the corner of the ceiling. He reached up, letting his boot repulsors lift him the few extra inches he needed, and neatly tore the spherical camera from its mount with one gauntleted hand. He tossed it to the agent not holding a mug. "Here, take this with you. Bye, now!"

When the door clicked shut behind the agents, Tony slid a chair out from another nearby table, flipped it around, and sat astride it, leaning against the chair back with his good arm. He nodded for Bruce to take a seat across from him. "So," he began as his friend made himself comfortable on the narrow metal chair, "talk to me."

Bruce exhaled gustily, his gaze fixed on the napkin holder in the center of the table. "It's like this. General Ross never liked the fact that I was involved with his daughter – even before the accident. He didn't… like you might expect from a military man, Ross had some very 'traditional' ideas. About who was an appropriate partner for 'his little girl,' you know."

Tony nodded, guessing easily what he meant. "Betty Ross is an omega."

He made a gesture of acknowledgment. "And no beta was ever going to be good enough for her in his eyes, no matter what _she_ thought about it."

"Okay," Tony prodded, "but what does that have to do with–"

"Blonsky's an alpha," Bruce cut in.

Tony felt his eyes widen. "You don't think he'd – his own _daughter?_ With the _Abomination?"_

Bruce offered an uncomfortable shrug. "Don't know for sure. What I do know is that Blonsky has a major grudge against me, and Ross _really_ wants to be responsible for the successful revival of the super-soldier program. And he thinks Betty needs a good, strong alpha to 'protect and guide' her. Right now, Blonsky's the biggest and baddest alpha there ever was."

"And that's why you want me to start working on the Hulkbusters again," Tony finished. "It's not for the sake of protecting the faceless civilian hordes – it's to make sure that Betty is safe if her father ever decides to make her the Fay Wray to Blonsky's King Kong."

"You think it's a ridiculous worry."

He _wanted_ to say yes, to set Bruce's mind at ease and put a stop to this absurd business of self-mortification. But it never turned out well when he held important things back from his friends, and he didn't have much room to throw stones at anybody else's self-destructive acts of atonement. "Seems awfully coincidental that Blonsky would escape a secure Army base with the country's largest federal prison on-site, so soon after you got back to New York," he admitted.

"You're right." His tone was bleak. He sighed, bringing his eyes up to meet Tony's. "So will you help me? I know you don't manufacture weapons commercially anymore, but they would never have to leave your hands. You're the only person I could really trust with this anyway."

_Oh God. If I say no to that, I might as well go find a puppy and steal its favorite squeaky-toy, to complete my descent into gratuitous cruelty._ "All right. I'll start working up some design sketches later this afternoon, after the board meeting. But don't get too attached to the idea of volunteering as a crash test dummy."

"We'll need to be sure that your designs will be effective against the Abomination," Bruce protested.

"Yeah, well, we can blow up that bridge when we come to it. By the way," he added, "have you thought about getting in touch with her again, now that you're no longer a wanted fugitive?"

Glancing down at the table, Bruce pulled a napkin from the holder and began shredding it, slowly and neatly. "I don't think that's a good idea. I may have to live with all this, but I don't need to drag her back into it. She should be able to move on with her life, like she was doing before the whole fiasco when I went back last time."

Tony grimaced in sympathy. "She said that to you?"

Bruce's head snapped back up in shock. "No, of course not! That's the problem." He leaned heavily on his elbows, propped against the laminate surface of the table. "The last time I showed up in her life, she dropped everything and literally chased me down to help me. That's why I have to stay away: I can't be the partner she deserves, but she doesn't want to abandon me."

He felt his lips tighten slightly, but Bruce was no longer looking at his face and didn't see his reaction. "And what exactly is it you think she deserves that you can't give her?"

Closing his eyes, Bruce sighed deeply. "Stability. Physical safety. Children."

"Children?" Tony repeated.

There was a long silence. "Yeah. It was always going to be more difficult, even before the experiment, but there was still a shot – and fertility clinics can do a lot these days to help a beta. But now… My blood carries toxic levels of radiation; the same is almost certainly true of my other bodily fluids, so it probably wouldn't be safe for us to try to conceive, even if my gametes haven't been rendered sterile by the radiation – and if I could manage it without hulking out. And if we did succeed, what if the child had my… problem? What if it hulked out in the womb?" His voice faltered. "I can't put her in danger like that, and I won't deny her the chance to become a mother."

Tony studied his friend for a moment. "Does she want to?"

Bruce dropped his napkin; this was clearly not the response he was expecting. "What?"

"To be a mother," he clarified. "Is that what she wants? Have you talked to her about it?"

Before his friend uttered a single word, Tony knew the answer was _no_. "We never really got that far," Bruce admitted. "We'd started talking about marriage, but neither of us even had tenure yet, and there was always so much work between teaching and the lab, so we never really had time to think about it."

Tony never would have guessed, in any conversation between himself and Bruce, that _he_ would be the one finding himself taking deep, calming breaths. "So you don't actually _know_ that she was planning to shelve her research and take time off from her career in the publish-or-perish academic world to have a kid – you just _assumed_ that she'd want to, and that assumption was reason enough to deny her something you _know_ she cares about enough to defy her father over?"

He watched Bruce shift uncomfortably in his seat; this couldn't be easy to hear. So he tried a different tack. "Listen, I know how much the idea of having kids meant to you, and that it hurts not to have that option anymore. But you just said yourself that you never discussed having children with Betty. You don't know if she feels the same way. Being an omega doesn't automatically mean you want babies." That last sentence came out a little more sharply than Tony intended.

"Do you really think she doesn't want children?"

"I don't know. I know that if _I_ were a professor at a major research university, I'd think twice before taking maternity leave." Tony continued, warming to the topic, "And career concerns aside, she might just not want kids, and all the responsibility and lifestyle changes that go along with them. Or maybe she does. The point is, I don't know – and _neither do you_. And you never will unless you talk to the only person who _does_ know, and give her the chance to make her own decision about what she does or doesn't want in her life."

A muscle in Bruce's jaw twitched. "I guess you have a point."

"You're damn right I do," Tony retorted. "Look, here's the thing. You've got a lot of _stuff_ going on, and I think some of it has you convinced that you're not allowed to get what you want. But don't let that turn into Betty not getting what _she_ wants – especially when it involves you deciding what she _should_ want, without any input from her. If it's wrong for General Ross to prevent her from seeing you because he thinks you're not good enough for her, then it's wrong for _you_ to prevent Betty from seeing you because you think the same thing."

Bruce blinked at him. "I hadn't really looked at it that way."

"Well you should, because I'm not going to be the voice of reason in your relationships all the time," he replied, pushing up from the chair. "Talking about feelings for too long gives me hives – I'm already getting itchy. Now, I'd love to stick around and chat, but Pepper will eat me alive if I'm late for this meeting. I'll see you back at the Tower?"

"Yeah." Bruce's voice was quiet, contemplative. _At least I gave him something to think about,_ Tony decided with satisfaction.

"Good. Later!" He left the room, snapping his faceplate back down as he headed for the flight deck.

* * *

JARVIS had made an effort to keep the robotic arms that dismantled the suit as gentle as possible when he landed on the roof, but Tony's entire left shoulder throbbed despite his efforts to keep the arm still. It was the only reason he hadn't strangled Prescott for launching into his yearly third-quarter rant about arms manufacture and how much more the company could be pulling in. He probably should've waited for Happy to bring the car around instead of flying back to the Tower, but if he'd had to spend one more minute with those chucklefucks, he would probably have said something regrettable. _Pepper would've regretted it, at any rate, and that's good enough reason to avoid it._ He'd flown one-armed most of the way, but his injury still protested the ill-treatment. _Ice. I definitely need some ice. And a snack – I wonder if there's any leftover bibimbap from that Korean place last night._ The elevator doors opened, and he stepped into the open-plan suite that served as the Avengers' common area.

Two pairs of eyes rose to greet him as Tony entered the kitchen area: Barton was perched on one of the stools at the breakfast bar, halfway through a sandwich. The mustard jar stood open on the counter by his elbow, a knife still protruding from its mouth. Natasha was seated at the dining table, working on what looked like a crossword puzzle. "Hey kids," Tony announced, making his way straight for the freezer. He found a chemical cold-pack just inside the door and applied it gingerly to his injured shoulder, trying not to let the pain show on his face.

"Frozen peas are better for icing injuries," Barton remarked through a mouthful of turkey on rye. He swallowed and continued, "They mold to your arm more closely."

Tony shot him a skeptical look. "Why would I have frozen peas? Does anyone here even _eat_ peas?"

Clint shrugged. "I eat peas."

"Do you need someone to take a look at that shoulder?" Natasha cut in. "I can have SHIELD send a doctor if you don't want to make the trip."

Tony waved away her concern with his right hand – or started to, before he needed to catch the cold-pack that was slipping off his shoulder. "Nah, what're they going to tell me? To take it easy, ice it for twenty minutes on and off, take some painkillers, and keep it limber. No point in dragging a medic out here to tell me something I already know."

Natasha looked uneasy – an expression he knew she let him see deliberately – but didn't press the issue. _Good thing, too. I don't even take that mother-hen crap from_ Steve _most of the time, let alone anybody else. Well… except Pepper. I take it from Pepper._ "Where _is_ Steve, anyway?" he added aloud.

"He stayed behind to talk to Fury about possible sites to warehouse the Abomination. Didn't get the sense that he was leaving until he got a definite answer that satisfied him." Clint took another bite of his sandwich.

Tony frowned. "Won't SHIELD run into trouble with Ross over that?"

"Not likely," Natasha replied coolly. "After Blonsky breached the perimeter wall at Fort Dix, Ross lost custody of him. We picked him up; he's our problem."

"That reminds me," Clint broke in, "for somebody who just got saddled with a 'problem' like the Abomination, Hill looked downright chipper this afternoon. I think I saw her _smiling_ when we headed out. It was creepy. What's the deal?"

"You didn't hear?" This time, Tony thought the surprise in Natasha's voice sounded unrehearsed. "Sitwell's pregnant."

Clint lowered, but didn't set down, his sandwich. "What? When did that happen?"

"About six months ago – the hostage situation, with Hydra? His heat suppressants wore off while they were holding him. Hill got to him in time, but only just." Natasha shrugged. "They'd been talking about starting a family anyway, so when the tests came back, Sitwell decided to go from medical leave straight into parental leave. Hill said he wanted time to get furniture and baby-proof things before he started waddling."

"He's pretty far along by now, then," Clint noted. "Have they picked out names yet? Do I need to get a baby shower gift – and should I go for pink or blue?"

Tony stuck his head in the fridge, using the search for leftovers as a pretense to escape the conversation, which had suddenly turned to _babies_. It wasn't that he objected to miniature humans in theory; it was just that every time the subject came up, he eventually found all eyes in the room slowly turning toward him. He grabbed the takeout carton, snatched a fork out of the drawer, and backed quietly out of the kitchen while Natasha and Clint became embroiled in a debate over gender-coded baby gifts.

In the den he found Thor sprawled across one of the big couches, watching the news. Tony made his way to one of the other chairs and made himself comfortable on the padded arm, rather than sinking into the seat; the soft, plush cushions of the TV room furniture tended to swallow a person whole, and Tony's arm wasn't up to the task of levering himself out of the seat later.

"Tony!" Thor greeted him amiably, "the skalds of your land already sing tales of our battle. I understand that this device allows the whole of Midgard to learn of our deeds?" Thor had made substantial progress in learning Earth technology in the past year, but there had been enough mistakes along the way that he occasionally asked others for confirmation.

Tony shrugged his good shoulder. "Only the ones who care enough to watch, but essentially." He turned his attention to the television, and immediately wished he hadn't. On the screen, in all his smartphone-recorded glory, was Tony himself in his armor, pulling the baby out of the ruined car and flying away from the battle. Across the bottom of the screen, the caption read, "A look into the future?"

A moment later, the screen split into two images, the anchorwoman giving the news report on the left and a publicity still of Tony-as-Iron-Man on the right. "In recent months, rumors have surfaced that billionaire-industrialist-cum-superhero Tony Stark has bonded with an alpha, following a decades-long history of casual relationships primarily with betas. Industry insiders have begun to speculate that a Stark Industries heir may be in our future. Here to discuss what this may mean for the technology market is Hammer Industries CEO Justin Hammer–"

Tony felt his mouth twist into a snarl. "I am _not_ watching this crap. When did CNN change its format to celebrity gossip – _bad_ celebrity gossip – anyway? Don't they have anything more important to waste airtime on, like asking Hammer about that time he smuggled a known terrorist into the country and nearly blew up Flushing Meadows?" Ignoring Thor's alarmed expression, he stood up sharply (sending a painful jolt through his shoulder) and stalked out of the room. Tony stormed past the kitchen and made it to the elevator before Clint or Natasha could ask any unwelcome questions.

Even once he was safely ensconced in his workshop with Judas Priest screaming from his speakers, electric tension still ran through every line of Tony's body. The icepack lay abandoned and warming on a nearby workbench, and his shoulder throbbed dully. One of the Mark XII's boots sat partially disassembled in front of him, but his mind refused to concentrate on the manual calibration of its stabilizers. _Everybody's got babies on the brain today._

Normally the cable-news gossip-mongers did very little to faze him; he'd gotten plenty of practice tuning out the talking heads. But something about the media fixation with making him a parent just got under his skin. _I pulled the kid out of a_ combat zone _. Apparently all it takes is for me to get within thirty yards of an infant, and suddenly it's because I want one of my own? Why does everyone seem to lose their minds when the subject turns to babies, anyway?_ He would've thought Bruce would be the last one to buy into stereotypes like that – _but no, apparently all omegas are just champing at the bit to get pregnant._ Even the Wonder-Twins had seemed different when they discussed their fellow agent's impending "bundle of joy." Thor didn't seem to have any preconceptions, but his people's biology was completely different, so he lacked the traditional assumptions and baggage that went along with human dynamics.

That thought brought him up short. _"Traditional assumptions." Shit._ He'd never even considered Steve's opinions on parenthood. Though Tony knew by now that Steve would never try to breed him against his will, he was still very much an alpha, and from the 1940s, no less. _How's he going to react when he realizes he's saddled with an omega who's allergic to the very idea of pregnancy and has negative interest in raising kids?_ Imagining the devastated look on Steve's face when his dreams of a litter of picture-perfect blond superkids were shattered made the bottom drop out of Tony's stomach.

_Why didn't I_ think _?_ Most of his life had been spent disappointing people, one way or another – it was why he went to so much trouble to lower everyone's expectations of him. He'd slipped up this time, let someone in without considering the fallout of his inevitable failure to be what that person wanted from him. He tried to sigh at his own folly, but the indrawn breath sent a stab through his ribcage. At the reminder of his injuries, anxiety surged through him. After he was done with Fury, Steve would come back to the Tower and look for Tony, especially if he'd reviewed the mission tapes and seen the pounding the armor had taken from that dive. Tony's eyes darted around the workshop, his sanctuary. _I can't do this here. I don't – not here._ "JARVIS, prep the Mark XIII."

"Sir, would it be preferable for me to remind you that the Mark XIII has not completed its final phases of testing, or that flying in your current condition will only compound the damage to your third and fourth left ribs and the scapulohumeral muscles of your left arm?"

"Neither. Just get the damned suit ready," Tony snapped. Hearing the harshness in his voice, he closed his eyes and took a slow breath. "I'm sorry, J. I just need to get out of here for a while."

"I understand, Sir," the AI replied quietly. "If any of your teammates ask, where shall I say you have gone?"

Tony considered the question for a moment, realizing that he had a destination in mind despite not having consciously thought about it. "Tell them I went to get a hot dog."

* * *

Streaks of orange and red from the sun setting off to his right glinted sullenly on shifting surface of the Atlantic. Tony watched the glittering shapes as he worked his way through one of Nathan's Famous beef franks. His suit helmet and one of the gauntlets sat next to him on the picnic table he'd perched on, the entire table listing slightly to one side under the weight of the armor as he sat on the tabletop, resting his feet on the bench.

That morning, waking up beside Steve without a scrap of care or concern about their future, seemed like a century ago. A single seagull waddled across the sand toward him and squawked; Tony tore a mustard-stained fragment of bun from his hot dog and flicked it at the bird, which snapped it up quickly in its beak. "How does a futurist get to be so bad at thinking ahead?" he asked it. The bird merely hopped forward and made an insistent noise, demanding more. Tony snorted. "There I go again, making commitments I refuse to deliver on." He took another bite of the frank and shooed the bird away with one boot. It flapped off several yards down the beach with an indignant squeal.

_The sad thing is, I'm actually_ happy _with the way things are, if I could just get them to stay that way. If it was only a matter of being in this relationship, without all the other expectations, I think I could manage not to fuck it up. But it doesn't work that way, does it?_ He bit the hot dog irritably, and muttered through the mouthful, "Why do I have to be so goddamn stupid?"

He must have been more absorbed in his own thoughts than he realized, because he hadn't heard the soft footsteps in the sand behind him. "Of all the unflattering things to call you – and I've thought of half a dozen new ones this week alone – 'stupid' isn't on the list," came the familiar voice. The sound of it touched something instinctive in him, tried to unwind some of the nervous energy that wrapped around his guts – but he was holding on too tightly to this particular worry.

"How'd you find me so fast?" he asked, not bothering to turn to face Steve, who came around the side of the table to stand just out of arm's reach.

Steve shrugged. "I know the ways you brood. And JARVIS helped. But what I don't know is why."

Tony's eyes refused to fix on his alpha; instead, he looked out across the water at the last smudges of color on the surface left by the sunset, and the darkening blue of nightfall. "I realized some things today, mistakes I've made. What else is new, right?" The sharp-edged grin of self-deprecation faded quickly. "But this time I think I shouldn't have run before I could walk."

"What's this all about, Tony? Everything seemed fine this morning." Steve didn't move any closer, but Tony could see at the corner of his vision that he wanted to.

He didn't shrug, not wanting the inevitable twist of pain from his shoulder to reveal weakness. "A lot's happened since this morning."

The response was simple, but laden with feeling. "Tell me."

_There it is. Time to face the music._ He took a careful breath to steel himself without setting off his bruised ribs. "I can't be the kind of omega that I'm supposed to be – that you deserve. I thought it didn't matter, that I could just power through on charm and bullshit and you wouldn't notice, but … I'm not seeing that working for the long term."

"Tony, what are you talking about? You know I don't expect you to be passive and obedient, except with battlefield orders – and not even _that_ half the time. I don't have any complaints. Where's this coming from?"

He waved off Steve's objections, still not looking at him. "Yeah, I know, you're all in favor of the Liberated Omega of the twenty-first century. But some things haven't changed in the last seventy years, and I'm just as much of a failure by modern standards as I would've been back then."

Now Steve did take a single step forward. "Tell me what this is about."

Tony took his time, using the few moments that polishing off the last bites of his hot dog gave him to decide on his phrasing. He settled on the direct approach. "I don't want kids. Never have. I don't want to be bred, I don't want to get pregnant, I don't want to be a parent. I don't know if that means there's something actually wrong with me, or if I'm just a shitty omega, but there it is, and it's not going to change."

He took another breath to continue, but Steve spoke first. "Tony, I don't–"

"No, Steve, let me finish. Because I've given this a lot of thought, and it's not going to change." He sighed gently. "I've never had what you'd call the 'maternal instinct.' When I was in my teens and my father used to talk about 'carrying on the Stark family line,' I started researching gamete donation and surrogacy. After he died, when I was juggling R&D work and running the company, I pretty much dropped the idea entirely. I didn't have the time or attention to raise a kid – I've been on the receiving end of that kind of parenting, so I'm not eager to pass it on. I don't take on projects that I'm not willing to devote the resources to getting right."

Tony angled his body a little away from Steve, raising his bare right hand to touch the arc reactor framed by his armor. "And that was all before Afghanistan. I've had enough foreign bodies taking up long-term residence inside me for one lifetime, thanks. And now, with this," he rapped on the chestplate of the suit, "I couldn't exactly take the time off for a pregnancy if I wanted to – which I _don't_. Iron Man is too important to global political stability; you'd literally have to chain me to a bed to keep me out of the suit, no matter how stupid and dangerous it would be to fight like that. I _enjoy_ being Iron Man too much to put the suit on a shelf for the better part of a year. I _need_ it. Maybe that just shows that I'm too selfish to have a kid anyway."

Steve tried to say something else, but Tony kept going, talking right over him. "The thing is, Steve, I'm not actually a stable enough person to create another person. I can make the right noises for the cameras, and I can manage 'responsible' in short spurts, but there's a reason I don't have any pets. JARVIS and the 'bots don't need me to _feed_ them. Dummy is programmed to return to his charging station when his battery reserve drops below 15 percent, and his chassis is durable enough that bumping into the corner of a workbench isn't going to hurt him. You need to pay attention to a baby _all the time_ , and I'm just not interested enough in the idea to do that. I've only ever been able to form close relationships with people who are willing to support me and do for me just as much as I do for them – more, a lot of the time. Kids don't work that way."

At last he turned to face Steve, ignoring the almost painful concern in his alpha's eyes. "When you come right down to it, I don't want to gestate a kid, I don't want to give birth to a kid, I don't want to be responsible for a kid, I would be lousy at raising a kid, and honestly, no rational person would even let me _near_ a kid below the age of six. People always say that finding the right person can change your mind, but you're the rightest person I can imagine, and it's still not happening. And it was incredibly unfair of me to start a relationship with you and not tell you all of that up front, because you're loyal enough to feel trapped in a bond with an omega who won't give you children."

When he'd finally run himself out of words, Tony slumped as much as the suit would let him, exhausted from the emotional effort. There was silence for a moment, and then Steve asked softly, "Are you finished?"

_In more ways than one, I'm betting._ He nodded. "Yeah."

"I've known for a long time – before we got involved – that I wasn't going to have kids. You don't have anything to worry about." The declaration was short and simple. _Too_ simple, to Tony's mind.

"I knew you were going to do this. I don't want you to pretend that everything's fine just to make me feel better. I can take it." He wasn't entirely able to keep the bitterness out of his tone; he was getting worse at putting up a front around Steve.

Steve actually rolled his eyes at him. "Tony, think for a second. Think about who I am, and what was done to me. I don't know whether Erskine's serum will get passed on to any kids I have and how it would affect them – but I do know that there are plenty of people out there who would love the chance to find out, starting with SHIELD and getting more sinister as you go down the list. There's no way I could have a child without painting a target on its back. And what if the serum doesn't pass down? Growing up, I had a catalog of medical problems as long as my arm, and the doctor at the orphanage was surprised I made it to my eighteenth birthday. I know medical technology has gotten better since then, but I still don't want to inflict half of what I went through on a child."

Tony watched him draw closer and move to sit on the picnic table's bench beside Tony's feet. He tried to interrupt, to protest that modern medicine was better than Steve thought, but this time it was his turn to be silenced. "And then there's the superhero thing. Maybe some people can juggle two full-time jobs that both require you to be on-call twenty-four hours a day, but I don't want to try to be Captain American and a father at the same time, and screw up both of them. Too many people depend on the Avengers for my attention to be that divided – or yours, for that matter. I mean, if you really wanted a baby, or if you were seriously injured, the rest of the team would pull together and we'd make it work while you were out of action. But as your CO, I'm honestly relieved to hear all this. The team needs you."

Now Tony was looking at him, trying to read his expression, though the silhouette cast by the fading light of the rapidly setting sun didn't give him much to go on. "I'm hearing a lot about why you _shouldn't_ have kids. But do you _want_ to?"

Steve shrugged. "I don't know. It might be nice, if things were different – if I was someone else. But it's not that important to me. I can be happy without having children. And it lets me focus on the people and things I already have that I care about." He rested a hand on Tony's armored boot.

It suddenly felt like the hot dog he'd eaten earlier had lodged itself in Tony's throat, and he swallowed hard against the sensation. "Are you telling me that after all this, not having kids isn't even a big deal to you? That I was tearing myself apart over nothing?"

Steve tilted his head back and grinned up at Tony. "I take back what I said earlier about you not being stupid."

After bouncing his wadded-up napkin off Steve's forehead in retort, Tony noticed for the first time that his alpha was wearing a motorcycle jacket. "All right, smartass, take me home."

"You're not flying?" Concern creased Steve's brow.

Tony reached for his discarded gauntlet, trying to put on a casual manner. "I got kinda banged up in the fight this morning, and this suit is technically still in testing, so I won't say no to a ride if there's one on offer."

Now Steve turned around on the bench to face him fully. "You've been hurt all this time? I should've checked in with you when we got back to the Helicarrier. Have you been to Medical?" From his disapproving expression, he was clearly expecting a "no."

"It's not really that bad," Tony began.

"If it wasn't that bad, you'd be flying," Steve pointed out. "Come on, let's get you back, and then I'm having SHIELD send someone over to check you out."

Tony didn't budge. "I don't need to be poked and prodded by some super-spy reject in a lab coat. I'll just put some ice on it, it'll be fine."

Steve held out his hand to Tony. "If you cooperate, I'll make it worth your while."

This merited some consideration. After a moment's thought, Tony nodded. "All right; I have a few ideas I've been meaning to bring up. I think you'll enjoy a couple of them." He took Steve's hand and allowed himself to be led away from the picnic table and down the beach.


End file.
